Friday, September 02, 2005

Thanks to my half-torn left rotator cuff, I've been in a little pain for the past six months or so. But now the shoulder is starting to freeze up, just like my right shoulder after I tore that rotator cuff.

Pain is not educational. Pain does not make you stronger. It is just pain.

It is particularly frustrating because I find it is a huge distraction. I have difficulty writing when my body is demanding attention, whether it's hunger or thirst or the need to fidget. Constant, throbbing achy pain really slows me down when I'm trying to be creative.

I was talking with Mark Farrell earlier today about how much writing one can do in a day. I said anywhere from five to ten pages on a screenplay, up to fifteen on a TV show. That's because a TV show is much more restricted. You know ten fire engines aren't coming around the corner because you can't afford it. If you're doing his last show, Corner Gas, then the next scene is going to be a couple people talking at a gas station or a couple people talking at a coffee shop, or possibly, just possibly, a couple people talking outside.

I find what slows me down most on features is action. I can have a few people jabber away and fill in acres of paper, but action, everything has to be fresh and original and convincing. I need to know the geography. I need to write in stunts. Every time I hit a big action sequence it's a road block I have to clear.

I hate writing action. Particularly as the director is probably going to rewrite the whole sequence, anyway, but I need something in there that will read well. I hate writing filler.

But, pain. Codeine helps, but codeine, not the best drug for writing effectively. I can't write drunk, either. Don't know how Hemingway did it. Maybe the short sentences helped.

But I'm on page 87 and it's not going to be more than 102 pages, that I'm sure of. It might be only 95 pages, which is short, but it's a pretty damn simple story. So there you go.

Boy, I hope I can stop this shoulder from freezing up. The last time it was a year and a half of pain, some of it serious enough to require opiates. Yikes.